


Fragments

by veyl



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: (they do), 4ams are the worst, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dreams vs. Reality, Happy Ending, Hints at reincarnation, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, hanzo is stubborn and needs to be shaken, hanzos mind likes to play tricks on him, jesse is Tired, look they're......both...ugh, sort of, they need to talk things through lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 03:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10822584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veyl/pseuds/veyl
Summary: It does not feel right to challenge fate to twist its form. Hanzo does it anyway.





	Fragments

There are fragments, memory like. They trick him and do not let him sleep.

“Tell me we haven’t been worse,” Jesse murmurs, leaning lazily against the doorframe of his room. Hanzo sniffs, turning his head a little so he doesn’t have to look at him when he says, “I cannot be glad that someone else is suffering.” “Oh, sweetheart, no.”

He wakes.

There is the slow, miserable feeling of being broken off from a dream as he is pulled back into consciousness. It resembles the rising of a heavy wave and numbness, a sort of disconnection from one’s self. The room is still dark and in that stillness where only the briefest touches of moonlight settle upon the walls he tries to recall the butterfly flash beneath the closed eyelids, as quick and fragile as a flutter of wings. There are fragments, memory like, and then

gone.

His attention moves onto the current, more physical things; the cool air on his bare shoulder and the lack of feeling in the arm trapped under him. He uncurls and twists to free it, and lets it lie uselessly on the pillow beside him as pinpricks of pain slowly wake it. He looks for things to ground himself; names items silently in the shadows of the room. Pillow. Blanket. Chair. Stormbow. Clock. He pauses. His eyes catch the digital numbers shining on it in the quiet.

03:59 Bright and green and staring right back at him. 04:00 He pushes off the covers, slowly lifting himself from the bed. 04:01 Worse indeed. One day the four-ams are going to kill him. He thinks, _but not yet_.

He gets a glass of water, goes back to bed and lies still until sunrise; not quite thinking about anything, not quite asleep.

 

There are fragments, forgotten words. They catch him off guard as they are spoken.

There is something achingly familiar in the way Jesse twists his hands, worrying the metal with the press of the flesh. He clenches a fist, then relaxes and lets both arms rest on his hips. Hanzo stares from across the practice range quite sure he’s never seen Jesse do this before, not in this life, and knows just as surely he has seen it a thousand times before. The cowboy notices him. He saves a smile for everyone, but there is a tug at the corner of his lips reserved just for him. Hanzo wonders if he is aware of it.

“Pretty handy with that bow,” Jesse says, tipping his hat.

Hanzo only knows because the dragons know. The spirits have been with him in life after life and he uses this advantage to steer the conversation away from their matching point. It is... difficult. Painful even. It does not feel right to challenge fate to twist its form. He does it anyway. He pretends not to notice the wrong response, the complete lack of understanding in Jesse as to why he should be feeling hurt in face of an otherwise unremarkable conversation.

There are fragments. Sometimes he indulges in them.

He would argue that he cannot help it; a slip of tongue is all it takes or a need to avoid a lie that would be far too obvious. _What’s home like for you, Archer?_ Hanzo could not give him a false answer if he tried. It is moments like these that Jesse looks at him, really _looks_ squinting a little in confusion as if he cannot quite figure Hanzo out. It is then Hanzo thinks (hopes) perhaps Jesse feels that little tug at his own heartstrings, the old ache of a lost lover, an echo from across time. He thinks (hopes) _perhaps he does remember me._

The dragons go to him too, out of some primal animal instinct perhaps, or pulled across the invisible plane to their other half. Timeless they have been watching these repetitive motions across the ages, since they first began, and will continue to do so unto eternity.

_For all their age they are not very wise_ , Hanzo thinks.

 

It catches up to him.

The storm, for all its glory, washes over him bitter and cold. Jesse holds his hand out for support as they make their way back to base and unconsciously rolls his thumb over Hanzo’s knuckles, a calming, soothing motion that makes Hanzo’s breath flutter out of his lungs in surprise. A reflex gesture. Jesse lets go as if burned; he’s done this before, he’s done it for sure, but he’ll be damned if the memory of it doesn’t feel like a dream.

Hanzo knows very well that he has kissed him in a downpour a thousand times over and that this time he cannot. _This life has better things for you than me_ , he thinks (hopes) so maybe, _in the next one, I can try to be better for you._

 

In the end whatever he is, Jesse is no fool. He knows something is not quite right. He’s noticed their moments or their muddier counterparts; he’s felt the cut at the root of some of them and what he cannot understand is _why._ He tries to breach the subject and Hanzo deflects. He presses to replay the lost ones and Hanzo lashes out. He stands entirely lost under the sparkling night sky, staring out at the raging sea as if hoping it will either provide an answer or swallow him, and Hanzo kisses him.

Foolish. Unthinking. Retracing his steps to the decision that he was _not going to allow this to happen_. Also, yearning. Thinking this, _this is what I should have been doing all along._

He ends up watching the 4am pass over the clock.

_One day, the four-ams, one day they will._

 

Jesse lets him off for a week, then two weeks, then comes back to push again. Hanzo looks and looks at the softness and weariness worried behind the color of his irises; the touch of cheerful foolishness pressed into the shape of his eyes, accented with smudges of tired despair. He may be different in appearance and name, but Hanzo would always know him all the same.

“Why’d you kiss me,” he asks, like Hanzo knew he would. Then, without further prompting for an answer he crowds Hanzo’s space, backs him against a wall. “We should talk about it.” And again, for which Hanzo cares little, does not wait for instruction or reply. Hanzo leans in to fit a pattern, words be damned.

It is a short kiss, small and cautious, not at all like the one Hanzo initiated before. It is followed by an embrace, a step further into Jesse’s warmth, impossibly relaxed, calm like the midnight silence or the water in the soft space of a windless dawn. Jesse rests his head on top of Hanzo’s, Hanzo hides his face in Jesse’s shoulder. This, here, is familiar. Fate, unchallenged, a point in time shining like a droplet of dew on a cobweb; perhaps a breaking point of sorts, when they finally meet in the middle. And yet Hanzo is... uncertain. There is the leftover fear tugging at his heart still, a doubt that he reserves for times of solitude and certainly not with Jesse’s arms wrapped around him; the underlying desire to be better for him.

“Darling,” Jesse murmurs against his hair. “Let’s talk about it.” And it is the heaviest Hanzo has felt in a while and the lightest. His body shudders with the opposing emotions battling to take space in the small cage of his skin. “Yes,” he agrees with an exhale. To be able to speak of it at all, at last. “I believe we should.”

 

He tells him. Everything. His heart beats a worrying rhythm at the way Jesse holds his cup, the way he licks off a stray drop of coffee from its rim. Familiar. He does not apologise.

“So you knew, all this time,” Jesse says. Then, defeated: “I was starting to think I must be losing my goddamn mind imagining things. The way you... allowed some things to happen, I suppose, but then not others.” “It is... not a simple matter.” “Well damn, then explain it to me, Hanzo.” “I did what I thought was best.”

Jesse doesn’t know what to say to that but by the look in his eyes Hanzo swears he can feel his heart breaking. He lets out a breath and holds his gaze. “What happens if we ignore this?” Hanzo says, “There have been lives that we were forced to spend apart.”

“Forced, you said it not me,” Jesse says immediately, latching onto his poor choice of words. “Circumstances. There was never you or me trying to stay apart though.”

Hanzo grimaces. “No.”

“Don’t feel good, does it?”

Hanzo falls silent, closing his eyes briefly as if that would take him away from this moment. No, it does not feel good, he can’t say what he wants to, that Jesse deserves better. And: he doesn’t want Jesse to have anyone other than him. Selfish? Or just the way it should be, he might argue.

“Look you think we can’t have this because of the shit we did this time around? But tell me we haven’t been worse and loved each other better for it.” Hanzo stands, runs his hands through his hair, paces the length of the room in frustration. Jesse stands too, holding onto the back of his chair as if uncertain whether he wants to throw it between them or move it out of the way. He waits for Hanzo to speak this time and when he does so, angrily, “I cannot be glad that someone else is suffering,” he reaches out for him, _Sweetheart, oh, sweetheart_ muttered against his lips.

 

There are fragments, memory like. They trick him.

Hanzo waits to wake and when he doesn’t, holds onto Jesse tighter. “I am sorry,” he whispers over his eyelids, kisses his tired cowboy again.

The next time 4am rolls around, so does Hanzo, curling softly closer into Jesse’s arms.

He sleeps.


End file.
